


The Wreck of the Venture

by taenia



Category: Dinotopia - James Gurney, Jurassic Park (Movies)
Genre: Gen, In which eating humans is presented as a totally reasonable thing to do
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taenia/pseuds/taenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ship bearing an unexpected cargo has washed up on the Dinotopian shore, and nothing will ever be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



> It's not my fault that James Gurney and Steven Spielberg are both wrong about feathered raptors and fluffy baby T. rexes. I am determined not to be.
> 
> I am not sure about this style. It is not how I usually write, and I am not sure I like it.

     The wreck of the Venture went completely unnoticed for almost two weeks. 

     These days, this seems surprising, given the enormous effect that this single event has had upon all of us. No other shipwreck, save, perhaps, that which brought the first men to Dinotopia, has meant more. Yet, when it happened, none of us knew that our world had changed.

     The ship had broken apart on an outer reef, unseen by man or dolphin. If the boneskull fish saw her shatter, they kept their own counsel. When the storm that brought her cooled, a vast metal bulk lay under two hundred feet of cold water – ammonites and little _Haikouella_ darted into her open hull. After several days, a dolphin pod came upon the broken ship. They found no bodies.

     In Pooktook, slow gossip drifted in. A fisherman had heard from an ichthyosaur that a ship had come. A hatchery worker reported that some ancient corals had been killed; the dolphin that brought her this news did not believe that this would cause any lasting damage to the reef.

     When the news of the wreck finally reached Waterfall City, it was dutifully recorded, and immediately forgotten. While news of a shipwreck might ordinarily be the source of some gossip and speculation (after all, some human survivors had only been discovered weeks or months after their ships were destroyed), the citizens, and especially the politicians, of Waterfall City were, at that time, engaged by a far more pressing concern.

     A young brachiosaur from the coastal town of Gyuguya had been killed. 

     This was disturbing enough, but even more alarming was the apparent identity of her killer. Her flesh had been scored by giant teeth, huge three-toed footprints scored the mud where her ravaged corpse was discovered. She had been killed by a giant theropod – there could be no other conclusion.

     The apparent departure of a giant carnivore from the Rainy Basin and its subsequent appearance fifty miles away unsettled everyone. The Council of Elders of Waterfall City responded immediately – dispatching a small expedition to formally assess the young brachiosaur’s cause of death.

     Although only a very junior research student at the time, I was appointed to this mission, as both record keeper and linguist. If we did find that a giant theropod had killed the youth, it would be my task to find it, to determine why the killing had occurred, and, if at all possible, to persuade the carnivore to return to its ancestral grounds. I can only assume that the Elders assumed that my own theropod nature might kindle a feeling of kinship within the monster, as only humans and herbivores made up the rest of the expedition.

     I cannot describe my feelings well -- these days, the excitement and the sense of responsibility that overcame me seem like they belong to an entirely different kind of creature. But I was young and proud, and I ate only fish. I was determined to do my job well.

     We undertook the journey to Pooktook by airship, and made very good time, departing at dawn, and arriving before nightfall, greeted by a cool evening breeze. After a night in Pooktook, hosted by Patriarch of the City, we made our own preparations for the long walk to Gyuguya.

     After departing from that city of fountains, the countryside slowly changed before us, first to farms, and then to forest, and then to brambly, salt-smelling overgrowth. The roads grew worse as we walked, and it took us almost half a day to reach the town of Irenic. Here, the villagers, who were very glad to receive a delegation from Waterfall City, held us up. They told us that had sent an urgent message by _Rhamphorhynchus_ only the day before, and were pleased that the Western Elders had responded so promptly.

     Their spokesman, a very self-important _Lambeosaurus_ with an appalling habit of honking whenever he felt particularly pompous, grew almost angry when he realized that we had not come to Irenic for them, and that this was the first news that we have had of any trouble. Marsh, the _Protoceratops_ ambassador of our group, eventually calmed him, speaking in his own language to find out what the trouble was.  
     A man had gone missing. Three days before, he had gone into the forest to gather nuts and mushrooms – he had never come out. Under normal circumstances, we would have advised a more thorough search of the surrounding forest and montane slopes, but the bloody nature of our own mission weighed heavy upon us, and so we took down what details we could, although no one knew very much.

     The missing man was called Enoch. He was twenty-four years old, and while he liked the lonely work of forest gathering, he had never left the village before. His disappearance was out of character. After a thorough search of the town’s bordering wildernesses, it was feared that he might be seriously injured. We promised to spread his story to the towns we passed, and to send what help we could. We did not think, though, that this sad tale bore any connection to our own story – Irenic is nearly thirty miles north of Gyuguya and no hungry carnivore would have come so far, so fast.

     After a night spent in well-furnished hadrosaur barns, we were treated to a good breakfast of bread, jam and salt fish. Then, rather than taking the roads through the jungle, we decided to make out own path, and set out towards the west, until we came at last to the coast, where we turned to the south. We expected to meet no one else to delay us on the beach, and it was the surest and fastest road to our own destination.  
     We walked along silver sand, and though we one came upon the footprints of another dinosaur (a dromaeosaur of some sort, judging from the sickle-clawed impressions in the sand), we saw no other living soul. I spoke little, although the humans in our party kept up their incessant chatter, remarking upon the plants, the insects, and the curious shape of the clouds. Sometimes, I have no patience for them.  
     We made a cozy fire on the beach that night, and I curled myself up to one of the humans -- a male, to judge by its appalling smell. But he was warm, and took the time to scratch the places that I could not easily preen. It was better than sleeping alone.  
     In the morning, we covered the coals of our fire with sand, and gave our thanks to the cycads who had given their leaves to keep us warm. Then, we turned south.

     At last, we came to Gyuguya.

     We arrived around midday. After refreshing ourselves in the village square, where it seemed that almost every citizen of the town, both human and hadrosaur, had come to greet us, we were led a little further south along the beach, to where the young victim lay. The male human and Marsh stayed behind to collect the stories of those who had known the young dinosaur before her death.

     The brachiosaur’s body had neither been buried nor given to the sea, as was customary. Instead, the villagers had dragged it to a secluded spot, protected from wind and tide. A great furrow led up to the body, the sand streaked with blood. The ropes that had been used to drag the dinosaur hung about her neck and tail, stained with gore. The smell was appalling.  
     Enormous bites cut through her belly and side -- great gouges that tore apart skin and scraped her ribs. Her intestines were punctured. Plant and fecal aromas combined with the smell of putrescent flesh. Botflies swarmed everywhere. I bobbed my head, nervous. My feathers were fluffing out in stress. I felt that I would have to preen forever to feel clean again.

     One of the members of our party, a human called Marie Ediacara, called for her tools, carried by another member of our team, an aging purple ankylosaur called Stumptooth. We carefully unpacked her calipers and scalpels, which were wrapped in oilskins and good white cloth.

     The dead girl lay on her side, but even so, she was huge by comparison to Marie and myself. As she worked, we erected stools and ladders by the side of the body so that Marie might have a good view of the brachiosaur’s various wounds and gashes.

     After only a few minutes of work, though, she descended, grasping something white and shining in her hand.  
     “It’s a Tyrannosaurus,” she said. “I am certain of it.” Then she opened her hand, to show us a jagged white tooth, which had apparently broken off and lodged in the brachiosaur’s side.  
     “But it’s very odd,” she continued. “She’s almost uneaten. Most of the muscle is still in good shape. Her lungs are gone, and her liver, and some of the fatty tissue around her tail. I’ve seen kills in the Rainy Basin, and the tyrannosaurs there eat everything, even the bone. They do not like to waste life.”  
     Stumptooth snorted. “That,” he said, “or they know that they may not eat for a long time. Maybe this tyrannosaur is planning to kill again, and soon.”  
     “How like an herbivore,” I said, “to ascribe a carnivore greed and violence. I have known tyrannosaurs and they do not waste their food.”  
     Marie nodded. “But tyrannosaurs,” she said, “do not leave the Rainy Basin. They do not come to the coast. And yet…” she trailed off.

     Unwilling to speculate further about the tyrannosaur’s motives in such unfriendly company, I walked towards the dead brachiosaur’s head. I supposed that she might have been pretty, with her greeny-gold hide and her fine scales. I have never quite understood sauropod beauty, but her frame seemed to me tall and strong, like the trunk of a cedar.

     Her face was a ravage. Skin had peeled from her mouth, exposing pink muscle and a grinning skull with broken teeth. Below the nostrils, I could see more fragments of bone and slime. Suddenly, I felt sick, realizing what I was looking at.

     My feathers fluffed out even more. I supposed that I must look quite as miserable as I felt.  
     “Come here! Her brain has been eaten,” I called to Stumptooth and Marie. “There have been other raptors here.”


	2. Chapter 2

We had gone back to the village to meet up with the others. I found that I could not bring myself to join in the communal meal, and so I went to the public bath, instead.

It was an unimpressive structure compared to the beautiful thermae of Waterfall City – nothing more than a shallow pool tiled with tight-fitting white stone. But the water was cool against my skin, and in an hour, I was an untidy mess of wet down and disordered pinions.

Though there were no sunbathing perches for me to dry myself, I did the best that I could, spreading my arms and turning myself to the West, trying to pull life and heat from the setting sun.

“You know,” said a voice behind me, “the sand on the beach is very warm.”

I gave an undignified squawk of surprise, and turned. Marie stood behind me. Her skin glistened with moisture, and her dark hair hung around her face.

“I went for a swim,” she said, with a shrug. “I didn’t want to bother you, but I needed ...” she trailed off, and squirmed uncomfortably, heaving her shoulders and twisting the muscles in her face. I have never been good at the body language of mammals, but it this case, I thought that I understood well enough.

“Anyway,” she continued after a pause, “the sand is warm, and the tide is going out. The beach might be a good place to dry off.”

I twisted my head to the side, contemplating what she had said. “Is she still out there?” I asked.

“Marsh has made … arrangements with a pliosaur. We will move her at high tide.”

I thought about this for a little while.

“I will stay with her tonight,” I said, at last. “She’s had enough taken from her. Someone should give something back.”

 

Marie had been right. Even with the sun dipping below the horizon, and long shadows creeping over the sand, the beach was pleasantly warm. I had hollowed out a shallow scrape to sleep in. The brachiosaur lay further down the beach, her great hulk coloring to grey in the oncoming dusk. I did not know whether she would have wanted my vigil. Sauropods do not mourn their dead in the same way that we do, and I knew that somewhere, her close kin would be listening for a new voice in the trees, a new smell on the wind. They would not care that I was here.

But it is our way to watch over the dead.

I remember stars over the water, and the strange transformation of the sand from gold to silver.

I do not remember when I started singing.

Raptor song has no words, and it cannot be taught. It is the heartbeat in the eggshell, the wind in the grass, the chorus of the rain.

We cannot lie when we sing.

I sang to the reflection of the rising moon, whose skin is like a lizard’s. I sang to everything the dead girl had ever eaten: leaf and seed and stone. I sang to the tyrannosaur that had killed her. I sang to my brother who had torn through her skull. I sang to my mother, who was far away. When I had finished, the sand was cold, the stars were bright, and little dewdrops had begun to collect around my pinions.

Satisfied that I had given what I could, I roused a little, then twisted my neck, pushing my head into the soft down under my arm, and fell asleep.

 

I woke before sunrise, roused by seabirds chattering, and a glow at the horizon. I stretched, shaking grit out from between my feathers, along with several small amphipods that had, apparently found my down a comfortable roost. The tide was lower than it had been when I went to sleep, and grey boulders peeked out of the foam at the side of the shore.

Next to one of these grey outcrops, was a young _Deinonychus_. She bobbed about rather comically, fluttering to keep her balance as she worried at something at the rocks, splashing salt water into her leg feathers.

As I approached the shore, I saw that she held a sea cucumber between her teeth. She had evidently caused it some distress – a mess of while filaments erupted from one end of the cucumber, and she shook her head from side to side as though she had just tasted something dreadful. But she did not put it back into the water.

 

I called out in greeting, dipping my head. I had come close enough to the shore that the waves lapped up at my claws, and my greeting seemed to startle her.

Her feathers puffed up, and she dipped her head in my direction, presenting a muzzle full of teeth.

“Mine,” she said with a low growl.

I scrabbled back awkwardly. Another dinosaur had never seriously threatened me before, certainly not a member of my own species. I did not know how to respond.

I beat at the air as I tried to keep my balance, and found myself stammering. “Yes,” I said. “It’s yours. I don’t want it. I just wanted to say hello, and I wanted to talk to you…”

She stopped, and cocked her head.

“You sing?”

I was still flailing, trying to regain balance. “What?” I squawked awkwardly.

“Sing?” She repeated the question in a tone that suggested I was very, very stupid. “Prey-song,” she added, by way of explanation.

“Oh,” I said, as her meaning finally dawned on me. “Last night? Yes, that was me.”

She turned back, thoughtfully, to the half-dead sea cucumber that she had dropped in her surprise. After several minutes, she seemed to come to a decision.

“Food?” she asked.


End file.
